---
title: Archiving Students
description: "Archiving Students: What It Means, How It Happens, and How to Restore an Archived Student"
---
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# Archiving Students
## Archiving Students: What It Means, How It Happens, and How to Restore an Archived Student 📥
### 📑 Table of Contents
- [Why Archive Students?](https://help.readtheory.org/archiving-students#why-archive)
- [What Does Archiving Do?](https://help.readtheory.org/archiving-students#what-does)
- [How to Archive a Student](https://help.readtheory.org/archiving-students#how-to-archive)
- [How to Archive a Class](https://help.readtheory.org/archiving-students#archive-class)
- [My Students Were Automatically Archived, What Does That Mean?](https://help.readtheory.org/archiving-students#how-to-archive)
- [Restoring Archived Students](https://help.readtheory.org/archiving-students#restoring)
- [Looking to Unenroll Instead of Archive?](https://help.readtheory.org/archiving-students#unenroll)
- [Related Articles & Resources](https://help.readtheory.org/archiving-students#related)
---
### Why Archive Students?
Archiving lets you clean up your active roster for students who've moved on, finished the year, or are no longer part of your class. It disables their account without permanently deleting it or the progress, and you have one year to decide what to do with the account and progress.
---
### What Does Archiving Do?
Archiving removes a student from your active class view and disables their account until they're unarchived. **If the student tries to sign in while archived, they'll be prompted to create a brand new account instead of accessing their existing one.**
⚠️ **Important:** Archiving a student disables their account across the board, not just in one class. This applies to students enrolled in multiple classes, students with co-teachers, and students linked to previous teachers.
Rest assured, their data is not deleted, and it can be retrieved at any time by restoring them.
---
### How to Archive a Student
1. Select the checkbox(es) next to the student(s) you want to archive. 
2. Click **More Actions**. 
3. Click **Archive Student(s). **
4. Click **Archive Student** to confirm the action.
### How to Archive a Class
1. From the **Classes** page, locate the class you wish to archive.
2. Click **More Actions**. 
3. Click **Archive Class**. 
1. Selecting **Don't Archive Students** will remove the class but allow students to stay in ReadTheory and not lose their history. .png?width=308&height=420&name=dont%20archive%20(1).png)
2. Selecting **Archive All Students** will disable their accounts, and students will lose access.
**‼️ Archived students don't count toward your plan's student limit. Archiving the class on its own doesn't change it.**
---
### My Students Were Automatically Archived, What Does That Mean?
Students are archived automatically for a couple of reasons:
1. Your account is over its student quota.
2. A co-teacher, or a former teacher, archived them.
⚠️ **Important:** Quotas count active student accounts. If a student's account is active, it counts toward the quota of every class they're enrolled in.
As with a manual archive, their data is not deleted, and they can be retrieved.
---
### Restoring Archived Students
#### To restore individual students:
1. Go to your **Students** page.
2. Select the **Archived Students** button to the right. 
3. Select **Restore** next to the students you wish to restore. 
#### To restore all students or multiple students:
1. Go to your **Students** page.
2. Select the **Archived Students** button to the right. 
3. Select the checkbox(es) next to the students names you wish to restore, or select the checkbox on the top column to select all students. 
4. Select **Restore Students. **
**📌 Note:** Restoring a student restores them across the board, not just to a single class.
If a co-teacher archived the student and you'd like to prevent this from happening again, we recommend removing that co-teacher from the class. See [Inviting a Co-Teacher](https://help.readtheory.org/co-teacher?hsLang=en) for more information.
---
### Looking to Unenroll Instead of Archive?
If you just want to remove a student's connection to your class, this keeps their account active, but no longer tracked by you as their teacher; that's unenrolling, not archiving. See [Unenrolling Students from a Class](https://help.readtheory.org/unenrolling-students-from-a-class?hsLang=en) for those steps.
---
### Related Articles & Resources
[Unenrolling Students from a Class](https://help.readtheory.org/unenrolling-students-from-a-class?hsLang=en)
[Moving Students to Another Class](https://help.readtheory.org/moving-a-student-to-another-class?hsLang=en)
[Inviting a Co-Teacher](https://help.readtheory.org/co-teacher?hsLang=en)
[FAQ: How Can I Reset Student Progress?](https://help.readtheory.org/faq-how-can-i-reset-student-progress?hsLang=en)
[Adding Students and Creating Student Accounts](https://help.readtheory.org/adding-students-and-creating-student-accounts?hsLang=en)
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